


Checking My Pulse

by ThatAj



Series: Exposure [25]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, POV First Person, POV Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAj/pseuds/ThatAj
Summary: "Everyone always wants to know what I remember."Part III of III and conclusion to this series.
Relationships: Ben Bruckner/Michael Novotny, Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk), Melanie Marcus/Lindsay Peterson
Series: Exposure [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1175849
Comments: 21
Kudos: 29





	Checking My Pulse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LaVieEnRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/gifts).



> WOW so it’s been a minute. I last posted a week before I had surgery (I’m _fine_ ) and I dunno, it’s like they cut the thing out of me and, with it, my muse. I have been struggling with this ever since and I hate to let you down but it’s not really not great considering all the time spent on it. I did, along the way, decide the end the series here. So it’s one part the conclusion of this three part arc and one part epilogue - a little something for everyone! - and all equally kind of shitty. But I had to post it because leaving this undone felt even worse than posting something I’m not thrilled with. 
> 
> The title of this part comes from a spoken word piece by [Alix Olson](https://open.spotify.com/track/5fBYYN73kBSlxQ3lS9tL9E?si=Mp8MECwGRmmblcQeIhEYLw) (go check it out, I’ll wait) and also the title of the best music mix one person ever made for another person. The parts in italics are shamelessly quoted from that piece. Standing on the shoulders of queer giants. 
> 
> While we’re all here, congratulations all you Hugo Award Winners! I’m super grateful to this weird little community here on AO3. Not the least of which without it I wouldn’t have met an amazing friend who continues to stun me with her… just willingness to be present. I first started posting this little fic a year ago and it has been a year filled with lots of unexpected changes (many beautiful changes, many difficult changes, and many changes that were both beautiful and difficult). I don’t know what I would have done this year without you to be in both the details and the big stuff with me. To quote an incredible author, “I’m grateful for you, munchkin.”

Everyone always wants to know what I remember. And it sometimes - well a lot of the time - feels like a coded question prying for details. About my life. About our life. About what Brian is like when not everyone’s eyes are on him. I guess sometime around when the Brian and Mikey show went into syndication, the Brian and Justin show premiered and, despite moving across the country, no one’s quite lost interest. I always forgot (a little irony here for you) about it when we were safe in our anonymity in Los Angeles what an incredibly small community Liberty Avenue is and how legends never die. 

And god it’s not like I want these memories, what I’ve heard second, third hand, is horrific enough. And even these images flipping on a film reel, like I’m watching my life up on a screen, like it’s something that happened to someone else, fuels enough nightmares, thank you very much. So there’s a lot I don’t remember and, honestly, I don’t want to. Except dancing with Brian at prom, always always always dancing with Brian at prom. 

So I’m not exactly sad about these missing memories. But I would do anything, _anything_ , to take them from him. 

I don’t remember having the seizure at school three years ago. I do remember Brian in the hospital, a hollow look in his eyes as though he were in a process of scraping out every piece of himself that I had ever touched. 

I think the idea of not being able to remember something that happened to you scares most people and maybe that’s where the fascination, the questions, the questions that bubble up and leak out whenever Brian leaves the room, come from. 

So, yes, I remember going to Babylon and going to the backroom. And no none of this has changed any of that. We still go to Babylon and to the back room whenever we’re in Pittsburgh. So don’t get too worried. 

The rest is like a fever dream underwater. Without the whole not being able to breathe part, for once. And _underneath the surface, all things loom larger._ And I desperately felt like I was _searching for the edges_ even though all I had ever wanted, all I had ever had with Brian, is something that has no edges. 

When they injected me with about a metric ton of benzodiazepine and I...don’t know? Woke up? I was so confused with my mom, and Michael and Ben, and Brian all standing around the bed. It felt so familiar but I couldn’t place it. I was especially confused because Brian looked like shit - he hadn’t shaved, his eyes were red and puffy, and his hair was sticking up all over the place like he had been running his hands through it and had somehow not looked in a mirror. I think I assumed he was hungover and maybe we were in the hospital for something related to that. I don’t know. I was just very confused. The doctor did the whole assessment and figured out what I remembered and Brian kinda filled in the blanks, and later I got more of the story from everyone else. They told me I was going to be tired and good lord if benzos don’t give you the most amazing sleep ever. So I also remember becoming drowsy and yawning and Brian’s eyes so warm that I no longer noticed how red and puffy they were. I guess the problem was I didn’t really wake up after I fell asleep. 

I found out what happened, of course, after I was finally, and permanently, out of the catatonic state. I guess the doctors had warned everyone that benzos are a first line treatment but are not effective for everyone, and the second line treatment is ECT but obviously there were risks. I found out about the ECT from Brian and the doctors. Michael filled me in on the risks. 

Sometimes it feels like Brian wants to protect me from my own life. Not that I blame him, I put him through so much, protecting me is protecting him but sometimes that means I don’t hear what he determines isn’t important. 

He doesn’t hide things from me. He just really really wishes they weren’t true and maybe by not speaking them, they’re not true. And they say OCD gives _me_ magical thinking. It doesn’t matter how cautious he is. I go out into the world and the world rears its ugly head. 

One story that he did tell me was about the trouble with keeping an IV line in me. He was just as curious about what I remembered from that time as everyone else. He’s human, okay? I know he likes to hold himself to some impossible standard above it all, especially when it comes to me but he gets to have that same morbid curiosity about this shit. I mean, I’m lucky in a sense that he’s fascinated by it all. We were in my hospital room shortly after I was finished with the ECT but before I was discharged. And he asked, “Do you remember your IV coming out?”

At first I was confused, which was a bit of a theme around this time, if you haven’t noticed. I was confused because they had switched out my IV a bunch of times, each time they hung a new bag of saline or medication or something, they changed the line. I asked him as much and the corners of his mouth turned up and he stuck his tongue inside his cheek and if that wasn’t a sight for sore eyes, god I had missed it. He shook his head and chuckled, “No not changing the IV. You sneezed your IV out.” I think my eyebrows must have lifted straight off my head and Brian laughed again. “You had a sneeze attack, you must have sneezed thirty times in a row. Only you Sunshine. Your IV went flying out. Thank god the nurse was here taking your temperature for the twentieth time that day. He said he had never seen anything like that before.” 

I didn’t remember that but, “I remember not being able to breathe. Just not being able to catch my breath.” I instantly felt like I must have said the wrong thing because Brian stopped laughing and the smile disappeared from his face. I have always always hated feeling like I’ve disappointed him. “I...remember you sitting next to me and holding my hand.” I tried, hopefully. I saw the tension leave his body. “You - you called me sweetheart!” 

He rolled his lips in, and his cheeks tinged pink, and he looked down and muttered, “They had you on some strong medications, Sunshine.” But he didn’t deny it. 

I forget how many days after ECT it was that I realized I had a real hole in my memory. Something not due to the trauma. It was a risk, doing the ECT. They couldn’t predict how my damaged brain was going to react, if it would be all reward and no cost or if it was going to cause harm as well as helping. I was in my hospital bed and Michael was sitting by me while Brian was doing...something. I wasn’t sure but I remember hoping it involved sleeping and showering because he honestly still looked like shit, but of course you can’t tell him that. Michael was rambling on, which I didn’t mind, he didn’t seem to care if I contributed much to the conversation and all in all it was a nice alternative to the regular background noise of a hospital, the whirring of machines and the beeping of alarms going off because someone rolled over wrong on their pulse-ox monitor. I tuned back in right as Michael was saying, “I guess you guys won’t be back for the holidays, but we’ll see you in LA for your show.”

I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead. The doctors had warned about memory loss but so far everything seemed in tact. “Wait,” I cut Michael off as he began to wax poetic about escaping the cold in Pittsburgh for sunny LA. Nevermind that February is when we get all the rain we get for the entire year all bundled into two miserable weeks when plans get cancelled and cars get totalled. (To be fair to LA drivers, car accidents occur when it rains because all the oil on the roads rises to the surface and the roads become more slick than they are anywhere else with regular rain. Also, LA drivers are terrible.) “What show?” Michael’s eyes widened to saucers and he looked instantly nervous and I knew he was wondering what Brian would want him to do right then. “C’mon Michael, just tell me,” I pleaded. 

“You...you have an art show in February. At some gallery in your neighborhood,” he managed to spit out, looking on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I panicked because what art was I showing? I hadn’t drawn or painted or done anything besides animation, really, since moving to California. I mean, that was what my degree was in, it was my profession, I’m not saying that like it’s a sad thing. “What art?” I asked cautiously because I was really worried at that point I had forgotten like a whole side hustle of painting that I had developed over the four years we had been in LA. 

Michael swallowed a couple of times and fixed his eyes on me like he had suddenly decided to stop caring what Brian thought and just tell me. “The art from all the comics and graphic novels you’ve done. That’s...that’s why Ben and I are coming, because Rage is going to be featured.”  
I took a deep but shaky breathe because thank fuck. Of course. Between contracts for animated television shows, I collaborated with writers who wanted to write graphic novels or comics. Always narratives that are often neglected in mainstream media. There was the [ queer woman writing about her eating disorder recovery](https://www.amazon.com/Ink-Water-Illustrated-Anorexias-Positivity/dp/1626258317/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3FBLDTZ2ID2I&keywords=ink+in+water+graphic+novel&qid=1572839995&sprefix=ink+in+water%2Caps%2C362&sr=8-1). The[ person who had lost a friend to AIDS](https://www.amazon.com/Pedro-Me-Friendship-Loss-Learned/dp/0805089640/ref=sr_1_1?crid=X6TKFE9081UW&keywords=pedro+and+me+friendship%2C+loss+and+what+i+learned&qid=1572840026&sprefix=pedro+and+me%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-1). The [Black man writing about his involvement in the Afro Punk scene and documentary](https://spoonersnofun.tumblr.com/tagged/graphicmemior). And, of course, Rage, which Michael and I would be publishing well into our retirement in Palm Springs. 

When Brian showed up back at the hospital sometime later, Michael rushed to the door of my room and spoke to him in hurried hushed tones while I pretended to be endlessly fascinated by my heart rate monitor and as though I wasn’t being managed like something fragile. I expected Brian to be angry. I know in these situations he’s not angry _at me_ but at the circumstances I always get myself into, but god it feels like he’s angry at me and I never want him to know that because then he feels badly and we get stuck both feeling badly about the other one having feelings about him. But he wasn’t angry, this time. I glanced at his face briefly as I stared at the beep beep beeping of the heart monitor and saw sadness paint its way across his features. I looked away quickly as Michael wrapped him in a hug. 

I was enthralled by the drip drip drip of my IV as Brian walked into the room and around my bed and sat down in the chair next to me. “You forgot about your show?” Brian asked.

I looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck are you sorry for?” Brian asked without much heat behind it. I reached up and touched the corners of his mouth and his eyes. The places where now, ten year later, small lines show up when he worries or is sad. Brian sighed heavily and sat back, out of my reach, although he placed his hand on my leg. “It’s just… you were so happy. When you found out, you were just so happy.” 

I smiled at him. “I’m usually pretty happy. I mean not right now because I hate hospitals, but usually…” He gave me a small tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. I tried again. “I was so excited when Michael told me. I _am_ so excited.” 

“It just feels like all of your best moments get taken from you,” he whispered, half to himself. 

I do remember the night my show opened. I was surrounded by everyone. Michael and Ben, Lindsay and Melanie, and my mom had all flown out. Daphne had begged and traded for a night off with another resident so she could be there. Tori, Ana, and Quinn were there. Molly was at our place, watching Gus, JR, and Adeline, and “protecting the house from certain destruction” as Brian put it. 

I remember after the show, walking with everyone to the club with the thumpa thumpa floating out of every bar and club on Santa Monica and the hordes of tourists with their passports stamped with an “I voted ‘no’ on Prop 8” visa and the bachelorette parties at Here Lounge every Friday - straight bachelorette parties because no lesbians were getting married. I remember grabbing Brian’s hand and pulling him with me against a wall down an alley off the main sidewalk. 

“This was the best night of my life,” I told him. He hesitated for a moment, his eyes warm, searching my face, before leaning in to kiss me. He whispered against my lips, “Mine too.” 

I remember Gus’s tenth birthday party and his confident swagger with his friends. I felt slightly less like the teenager I think I revert to whenever we’re in Pittsburgh for any length of time when I thought about how grown up he had gotten and how he was nearly Melanie’s height. And I remember the way Brian cocked his head and remarked, “They say it’s through our kids that we stay young but I haven’t seen much effort on his part,” reflecting my own thoughts about how grown up Gus seemed. 

I remember the night Gus was born. I remember the confusion and excitement that I had suddenly gotten swept up into this very adult world where people had babies and their friendships seemingly did not resemble those I had with my own friends. 

I remember standing under the streetlight as Brian approached me, anxiety bubbling up in my stomach and confusion strumming through my veins. Confusion because boys like me don’t get men like him. And I remember kissing him for the first time and tasting whisky and cigarettes and sex and...  
...Ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> FIN.
> 
> (small shameless plug, if you at all enjoy CMBYN, I'm writing a fic over in that fandom. Check [it](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21319612/chapters/50772160) out!)


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